If limiting government power by constitutional restraints doesn’t work,
and if trying to influence elections to keep evil people out of office
doesn’t work, what is left? Some would argue nothing. But, in reality the
people can go on strike and refuse to finance or to fight in wars that
have no legitimacy.

If the authoritarians continue to abuse power in spite of constitutional
and moral limits, the only recourse left is for the people to go on
strike and refuse to sanction the wars and thefts. Deny the dictators
your money and your bodies. If enough people do this, the time will come
when the dictators’ power will dissipate.

This month marks the 250th anniversary of the
Stamp Act Riots that crushed Britain’s attempt to subject American
colonists to a variety of taxes, that demonstrated the power of mass
noncompliance, and that led the way to the American Revolution.

Jennifer Carr has penned
a
paper on how to improve the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act for
the University of
St. Thomas Law
Journal. It is… strange. It puts some effort into tracing the
history of conscientious objection to military taxation and the various
legal arguments that have been put forward in its support. And then it
makes some suggestions for how to make “Peace Tax Fund” legislation more
effective, suggesting that this moment of history is especially ripe for
such a bill since politicians are sensitive to issues of conscience that
showed themselves during and after the drafting of Obamacare. But the paper
doesn’t address the most glaring flaws of the current Peace Tax Fund
legislation, and its proposals don’t really make the bill any better.
Still, there’s some satisfaction in seeing someone try to take all of this
seriously and as worthy of some scholarship.

News of a tax revolt in Russia was found in a collection of international news
briefs carried in the 22 August 1866Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser:

Intelligence has reached the Russian capital from Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia,
that 1000 Polish exiles in that place, had risen in revolt, killed some of
their guards, and fled for refuge to the woods. Another insurrectionary
movement against the Czar’s authority has taken place at Sukumkale: a number
of persons, irritated by the imposition of direct taxes, resisted the
collecting officers, killed several of them, and then set fire to the town.

I believe this last incident refers to the city now called “Sukhumi” in
Abkhazia. This would have been not long after the subjugation of Abkhazia by
Russia. There was a mass emigration of Abkhazian refugees into Turkey around
this time as well, as Russia planned to settle the region with Cossack
colonists.

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